What’s the last ad you remember? The odds are it was a video that made you smile, chuckle or buy car insurance from a lizard. That’s because video is memorable and sure beats the heck out of a 20-page white paper. Even the word ‘video’ holds power. According to Syndacast, adding the word “video” in an email subject line boosts open rates by 19-percent and click-through rates by a massive 65-percent.
As a B2B marketer, you might be thinking this is all well and good, but video is a better fit for B2C brands. I’ll let you in on a little secret: there is no such thing as business-to-business. Under the hood, B2B companies are selling to a flesh and blood decision maker that would rather watch a cat play the piano than skim an industry report over their lunch break. Whether you call them customers or clients, they are one and the same. Video is no longer a nice-to-have asset for B2B companies, it is a critical slice of the content pie in order to stay competitive.
Staying Competitive with Video
More than 500 million hours of videos are watched on YouTube each day. If you combine that with the eight billion daily shares on Facebook, video is the most consumed type of content by far. This includes B2B consumer eye-share as well. In fact, 92-percent of B2B customers watch online video and 43-percent of B2B customers search for video content when in the research and consideration stage.
In addition, YouTube viewers aren’t just middle school students playing on their smartphones. As it turns out, 75-percent of senior execs watch video content while they are at work. That’s 3/4ths of final decision-makers actively searching for video content. We know that MQLs are the lifeblood of all B2B marketing efforts and video is exactly where you should start investing.
As a B2B marketer, you know that awareness is only so helpful. It’s conversions that keep the lights on. While front-end metrics are the primary beneficiary, video also boosts landing page conversions by 80-percent. For B2B companies selling complex products, including a simplified product explainer video on a landing page is converting far beyond any other medium.
Low Risk, High Reward
While there will always be critics out there, most audiences aren’t looking for perfection in the B2B space, specifically with video. The opportunities to pleasantly surprise and truly wow potential clients are abundant and you may already have everything you need to capitalize.
Have you run a webinar? Held a user conference? Interviewed your CEO? B2B companies would be hard-pressed not to answer yes to one, if not all, of the above. Don’t underestimate the power of repurposing existing video. Anything that has been filmed for any reason is fair game. Consider repurposing the following:
- Video from user conferences
- Live webinars
- Interviews with thought-leaders at your company
That being said, original content will nearly always outperform recycled material. In the B2B space, unlikely heroes have emerged as content geniuses. For instance, every Friday Juniper Networks, a network cloud solutions company, asks one of their developers to sit in front of a camera for a short Q&A—typically a consumer question pulled out of a fishbowl. The video is unstaged, unrehearsed, and the hard cost of a boom mic and webcam. Let’s call it a generous, one-time $150.
To-date, Juniper Networks has amassed over 103K followers on Twitter and 23K subscribers on YouTube. By going face-to-face using #AskJuniper, this B2B tech company is able to make authentic connections, answers questions, and build rapport with their clients.
The opportunities for B2B companies to surprise clients with video and even more to surprise their bosses with the results are incredible. Now roll up those sleeves and get started!